McAfee Family Protection 2.0 Review - Review 2022

Dorsum in 2022, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano disrupted European air travel, 33 Chilean miners saw daylight subsequently 68 days cloak-and-dagger, and Safe Optics enjoyed a reputation as a hot parental control program. Information technology had some and then-unusual features, such equally limiting children'south consumption of media based on ratings. McAfee bought the company and rereleased the product with a McAfee make, but McAfee Family Protection 2.0 hasn't changed much since. The long-promised updated edition of McAfee's parental control production should appear after this year. That's fantastic news, considering the existing product is getting long in the molar.

Your $49.99 yearly subscription lets you install McAfee Family Protection on up to three PCs, and configure up to 10 kid profiles on those PCs. The separate McAfee Family unit Protection for Mac offers most of the same features for three Macs. That'due south a bit dissimilar from most competing products, which tend to offering protection beyond multiple platforms.

For example, Qustodio Parental Control 2022($39.95 at Qustodio) lets y'all protect 5 children on five devices (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Kindle) for $44.95 per year. A $39.99 subscription for ContentWatch Net Nanny seven protects just one device, simply for $79.99 you go ten licenses to employ on your Windows, Mac, and Android devices, plus an all-family license for ContentWatch Net Nanny Social(nineteen.99 Per Year at Net Nanny). And Symantec Norton Family Premier ($49.99 per year) doesn't impose whatsoever specific limit on number of devices or children, though it only supports Windows, Android, and (to a lesser extent) iOS.

Getting Started
To get your installation of this product started, you redeem your registration code online and download McAfee Family Protection to your PC. As noted, the license lets y'all install on a total of three PCs.

A setup wizard starts by letting you choose a protection level and gender for your PC'southward administrator user. The default low protection mode applied to this account does goose egg just cake pornography.

Most parents volition probably go on to ascertain a contour for each child. This procedure starts with selecting a username which, in an odd twist, must be unique across all users of the service worldwide. I found I could proper name an imaginary child Lommy, merely Arya was already taken. You lot'll accept to find an available variation on your child's name before you tin proceed. Ascertain a password, add historic period, gender, and an optional email address, and you're almost done. To finish, you cull whether to configure this account based on historic period, or copy settings from an existing account.

With Symantec Norton Family unit Premier($49.99 Per Year at NortonLifeLock), Mobicip(39.99 Per Yr for 5 Device Plan at Mobicip), and others, you configure each child's profile online and associate that profile with any number of Windows user accounts or devices. McAfee works a bit differently. If all users rely on the same Windows account, each user, whether child or parent, needs to log in before using the Internet and carefully log out when done. If each child has a Windows user account, it's possible to have McAfee log in automatically to the correct profile for each business relationship.

Family Summary
To manage your McAfee Family Protection configuration, yous right-click the notification expanse icon and choose Open Administrator. This brings upwardly a multi-tabbed display that lets you view and modify settings for all family unit members.

The display starts with a Family Summary tab that lists all family members across the peak. Each column displays the family member's status for each of eleven tracking areas, among them Websites, Online Games, and Fourth dimension Limits. In many cases you tin can click on an detail to make large-calibration settings. For case, you can click on the Websites item in a child'due south column to gear up content blocking to low, medium, high, or custom. Down the left side, xi tabs let you dig in for more detailed configuration.

You can also log in to your configuration online, though I had a tough time finding the right URL. There was no straight link from my online account to the management console. Conveniently, the online configuration folio looks and acts exactly like the local i.

Content Filtering
When you initially set up each child's age, McAfee preselects an appropriate drove of content categories for blocking. You tin can also make your own choices from the 35 bachelor categories, and choose whether or not McAfee should enforce Prophylactic Search in search sites that support information technology.

In testing, McAfee's content filter proved to be browser-independent, unlike Microsoft Family Condom for Windows 10, which only works in Windows Explorer and Microsoft Edge. Information technology resisted the simple three-word network command that caused it trouble when I first reviewed the product. And it handled secure (HTTPS) websites, and so your oh-so-clever teen tin can't exercise an end-run effectually the content filter by using a secure anonymizing proxy.

When McAfee blocks a website, it warns the child that access is not permitted. Clicking a link on the warning page displays the categories that triggered the content filter. In this state of affairs, Norton and Microsoft offer the child the option to send parents an email request for an exception; McAfee but advises consulting the administrator.

When blocking a secure site, McAfee can't display a warning in the browser. The browser just shows an mistake message, while a popup banner reports that an HTTPS site was blocked. I found information technology odd that it repeatedly blocked Chrome'southward sign-in page in this fashion. And because the HTTPS banner offers no details, I had to dig deep to notice out why Facebook was blocked even when I enable Social Networking. It turns out that the Personal Info category also blocks Facebook.

Cyberspace Scheduling
One way parents tin have a hand in monitoring children's Internet use is to just watch them while they're online. Are they giggling? Sniggering? Trying to hide the screen? That doesn't work if the child gets online in the wee hours, so most parental command systems include the option to set up a schedule for utilize of the Internet, the computer, or both.

For each child, you can ascertain a weekly Internet usage schedule in half-hour increments. The configuration process uses the familiar filigree model, but dragging with the mouse "draws" on the grid rather than setting a rectangular cake of times to allowed or blocked. You can likewise limit the number of hours the child can spend online every day. And your kids tin't get around the scheduler by meddling with the system clock.

A kid who has admission to multiple PCs in the house could conceivably hit the time limit on one and only switch to the other. Norton also sets limits on a per-device basis, while Internet Nanny'due south daily time limits apply across all devices assigned to the kid. As for Qustodio, it can impose limits on each device or on all devices—your option.

Videos, Music, and Games
The strictest parents might forbid their children all admission to websites offering videos, music, and games, on the basis that those sites contain some content that'south just non for kids. McAfee avoids that sort of draconian lockdown by letting parents limit media access based on official ratings.

On the videos tab, parents can cull to limit Television set shows and movies based on ratings: Telly-K and One thousand, Tv-PG and PG, Boob tube-14 and PG-thirteen, or no limits. Parents tin also block inappropriate YouTube videos, and optionally lock downward media players.

The Music Folio doesn't offer quite as much control. Parents can cake access specifically to songs that are flagged as having explicit lyrics on the iTunes store. Peer-to-peer file sharing, which isn't express to music, can too be blocked here.

As for managing the children's access to games, your choices are simple. You tin can cake all online games, and optionally block gaming websites and Spider web-based games. There's no gaming command based on ratings past the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) or International Historic period Rating Coalition (IARC).

Blocking rated content is one area in which Microsoft Family Condom excels. Instead of going to multiple pages for different content types, yous simply select the child's age. Family Safety then chooses the advisable maximum rating for apps, movies, TV shows, and games.

Email and Instant Messaging
For the very youngest kids, email tracking and control isn't a worry (unless you lot're using Microsoft Family Safety, which requires an electronic mail account for every child). Even older kids are more likely to communicate via social media, instant messaging, or text. Merely in example you demand it, McAfee includes the ability to lock down SMTP/POP3 email and block access to Web-based email. It also has the unusual ability to limit the child'southward email contacts to a parent-approved listing.

McAfee also has the nominal power to capture IM conversations, block IM protocols, and cake all Web-based IM programs and chat rooms. That last feature is but an extension of content filtering, so it probably works fine. Merely IM monitoring and blocking piece of work only for Yahoo, MSN Alive Messenger (which has been folded into Skype), and ICQ. ICQ? Really? This feature in detail is showing its age.

Social Tracking
Net Nanny Social is all about monitoring your children'southward social media activity, as is MinorMonitor. Qustodio keeps a full timeline of your children's Facebook activeness. McAfee'south social network monitoring is both broader and more than limited.

For each child, you ascertain a number of personal data items that probably shouldn't exist posted on social media. Street accost, home phone, cell telephone, and school proper name are bachelor past default. You tin add other data items if desired. And you can bank check boxes to salvage sexually suggestive or profane posts. This feature applies to all posts on any websites, non but specific social media sites.

In testing, though, I couldn't see this characteristic working at all. Looking back at my before review, information technology appears I had the same problem, though at the time it was blamed on Windows XP. It seems that Facebook's switch to all-HTTPS knocked this characteristic for a loop.

Other Settings
If your child starts wildly trying to access inappropriate content, McAfee can send you lot an instant alert. You can cull three levels of sensitivity, and accept alerts sent to one or more than electronic mail addresses, or texted to one or more phone numbers. On receiving an alert, parents might choose to log into the online console and lock down access fifty-fifty further. Instant alerts aside, parents can likewise choose to receive a daily or weekly summary of each child's action.

On the avant-garde settings tab, there'southward an option to plough off content filtering for HTTPS websites; don't do that! You can heighten McAfee's forced Safety Search by blocking whatsoever search that includes profanity, sexual linguistic communication, or a parent-defined collection of keywords. In testing, I couldn't make this feature work. I divers "fnord" as a banned keyword for 1 child account, but had no trouble searching the phrase "fear the fnord."

Buried in this tab are settings for program blocking. This feature blocks all Internet access for specific programs and programme types. For example, you can block file sharing, email, and FTP, if you wish. The dated program lists include a number of long-gone programs such equally LimeWire and Morpheus. Desire to cake a custom plan? You'll have to right-click the notification expanse icon and detect it in the list of programs that have accessed the Web.

Activeness Reports
Y'all'll find a tab for activity reports in the configuration dialog, but no access to the reports themselves. To get at those reports, you'll go once over again to the right-click menu of McAfee's icon in the notification surface area. On the Activity Reports page you can select any apply and pick a engagement range; the default range just covers today.

The websites page reports the number of sites allowed and blocked, lists the top sites visited, and graphs online activeness for different times of day. Information technology besides reports the child'due south latest Spider web searches. You can dig in for a full list of blocked sites and click whatsoever of them to see what category triggered the block.

Another folio lists all games and programs used by the child during the specified menstruum. You might think you lot could correct-click an detail in this list to add it to the blocked listing; you'd exist wrong. Likewise in that location's no piece of cake style to block a website from the allowed list or whitelist a site establish on the blocked list.

Other pages report on video, music, email, IM, and social networking activity. As noted, I didn't find that McAfee actually captured social networking messages that included the too-personal data I specified.

Wait for the Update
McAfee Family unit Protection 2.0 is a smash from the past. Its features were height-notch five years ago; today they're a flake dusty. My McAfee contacts would take preferred that I simply ignore it until the new, shiny version comes out after this year, only I couldn't do that. Residuum assured, when the new edition comes out, it will have my undivided attention.

For at present, skip this product and instead cull one of our iii Editors' Selection products for parental command and monitoring. They are: ContentWatch Net Nanny seven, Qustodio Parental Control 2022, and Symantec Norton Family Premier.

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Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/migrated-19345-security/10548/mcafee-family-protection-20-review

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